Trevor McKendrick - How to increase your agency

Hi all,

Seis is putting on our 2nd annual Unlimited Tacos & Mexican Coke event.

Tuesday January 23 from 8-11pm @ our Lehi, Utah offices.

All the details & registration is here

It was one of the best events of the year last year, and I expect this time to be even better.

BONUS: if you beat my cofounder Josh in foosball we’ll give you a $100 bucks. We have an overhead ceiling camera & multiple TVs setup for spectators to watch, too.

(For last year’s event we paid people $100 to beat me at ping pong. I went 14-5 on the night. Here’s hoping Josh doesn’t fare as well…)

Trevor

How to increase agency?

I tweeted last week asking this question. The responses were… mostly just okay?

But one response from Ken Frei had a sentence that summed up why agency is so powerful: everyone has the same amount of agency.

That’s important to remember because agency is not about outcomes. It’s not about destinations.

The power of agency is in making the best choice available to you.

A relevant tweet of mine from almost 4 years ago: “Optimism isn’t about seeing a glass & thinking its half full. Optimism is believing you have the agency to refill the glass.”

Agency is tricky because what I’m really saying is not that everyone can achieve all their goals, but that the possible list of achievements for all of us is almost always bigger than we’re reaching.

Emmett Shear’s tweets on agency

Many (most?) people do “work towards goals” that are performative. They want to feel like they’re making progress. So they do things that look/feel like “work”, but aren’t actually progress.

The way you know this is happening is: “can you write down a detailed description of the world after you’ve succeeded?”

You need a theory of success, and then you need the dumbest possible ideas to execute on that theory.

It’s a great thread.

A forceful tweet

“For God's sake, man, pull yourself together! Being a man is about assuming responsibility! For you, for her, for your kids, for identifying and taking action to fulfill your own desires and those of your people! Nothing can bring you peace but yourself! Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of your principles! The sympathy of others is a cheap analog! Shut up and act!”

“Taking action to fulfill your own desires” is good. Your desires are good. The thing you want to influence & change & build is good. You would be happier if you sought to make it become real.

A rule of thumb to read more (tweet)

“A rule of thumb I find useful: 1 minute / day = 1 book / year

“When I think about the time I spend waiting in line, commuting, doing low-effort errands & maintenance, etc, reading dozens of books a year seems rather easy

“Assumes a book takes about 6 hours; doesn't apply to all books, of course, but reasonable for many”

An example of exercising your agency. Your options to “read more books” are bigger & more possible than you realize.

The great deficit in humanity & in most lives is will.

Things you’re allowed to do (website)

“This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you couldn’t, or didn’t even know you could.”

How to be More Agentic (substack)

This is a great article, but I disagree w/ the opening that agency is about “finding real edges”.

Skip to the section that says “Court rejection”

90-year-old man spends $10k on ads to tell AT&T CEO about his slow Internet (website)

There’s somebody using their agency

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